This volume offers a broad collection of evidence and findings regarding the range of structures -conceptual, cognitive and neurological- underlying abstract reasoning. The authors' worldview is 'embodied realism', stating that our experience is shaped by the objective 'real world', but also by our own physical and cognitive systems. Part I outlines the key ideas about thought and mind which are central to the subsequent discussions: the mind is inherently embodied; thought is mostly unconscious; and abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.